Sports

Team USA's chef witnessed Aurora theater shootings

SÃO PAULO — These days, Bryson Billapando hears about threats of violence in Brazil and beyond and flashes back to a gruesome night two years ago in Colorado.

He has done his best to move on since the deadly theater shootings he witnessed at a midnight Batman movie in Aurora, and is now cooking up fresh and healthy meals for the U.S. World Cup soccer team in a gig he couldn't have imagined even just a year ago — or while attending
Denver's Johnson & Wales culinary school.

"I just happened to be on the left side of the theater," Billapando recalled Wednesday. "Then all craziness broke loose."

Billapando's then-wife Toni was pregnant at the time. She was sitting to his left and got struck by fragments.

Since the attack, he has jumped into his work, saying the timing of the World Cup "couldn't have been any better."

Billapando underwent counseling to deal with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. A rash of shootings in recent weeks brought back bad memories.

"Any type of domestic-type attack, it always hits close to home, like the Boston Marathon bombing, school shootings, the mall shooting, everything," he said. The Associated Press

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